"Comedy, Youth, Manhood in Early Modern England examines from a social and historical perspective Renaissance comic stage presentations of the conflicting imperatives young men faced in trying to win manhood. Its chapters focus on the importance of marriage as entry to manhood, on satires of academies of conduct with eulogies of plays as models of conduct, on the plight of younger brothers forced to seek support because the family's resources were willed to the elder, on their fantasy of gaining manhood by marrying a wealthy, sexy widow, and on their real dilemma over choosing whether or not to duel when both attractions and dissuasions remained entangled and conflicted. The book reads Tudor-Stuart comedies in order to illuminate the problems and promises of achieving manhood because comedies permit public scrutiny of what might seem inhibitingly painful or irresoluble and of nuances that might go unregistered by the data and contemporary documents employed in social and gender histories." "Early Stuart presentations of dueling epitomize the conflicting moral and sociopolitical allures and demands that characterize the problems of youth striving to prove men in early modern England. Many presentations subordinated the violence of the sword to the discipline of the pen obedient to the kingdom. Such claimed that service to the commonweal constituted a new, temperate proof of genteel manhood; but this replaced only inadequately traditional proofs of martial courage. Meanwhile dueling's advocates appealed to macho martial attractions, even as they had to acknowledge the waste and mayhem. Both stances came replete with ambivalent means of demonstrating aggressive courage simultaneously with temperate rationality, since both of these contradictory virtues were presumed to demonstrate early English manhood."--Jacket.